Bookshelf/ Vol.I / Vol. IV. Part VI. Contents. Chapter I. 1. 2. 3. II. 1. 2. 3. III. 1. 2. 3. IV. 1. 2. V. 1. 2. Appendix I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. II. 1a. 1b. 2a. 2b. 2c. 3. 4. III 1. 2a. 2b.

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APPENDIX

PART II

CRITICAL EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF THE CHIEF COUNTER-SCHEMES OF

APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION; AND ALSO OF DR. ARNOLDS GENERAL PROPHETIC

COUNTER-THEORY

IT was stated at the conclusion of my Sketch of the History of Apocalyptic Interpretation, that there are at present too, and but two, grand general counter-Schemes to what may be called the historic Protestant view of the Apocalypse: that view which regards the prophecy as a prefiguration of the great events that were to happen in the Church, and world connected with it, from St. John’s time to the consummation; including specially the establishment of the Popedom, and reign of Papal Rome, as in some way or other the fulfillment of the types of the Apocalyptic Beast and Babylon. The first of these two counter-Schemes is the Præterists’, which would have the prophecy stop altogether short of the Popedom, explaining it of the catastrophes, one or both, of the Jewish Nation and Pagan Rome; and of which there are two sufficiently distinct varieties: the second the Futurists’; which in its original form would have it all shoot over the head of the Popedom into times yet future; and refer simply to the events that are immediately to precede, or to accompany, Christ’s second Advent; or, in its various modified forms, have them for its chief subject. I shall in this second Part of my Appendix proceed successively to examine these two, or rather four, anti-Protestant counter-Schemes; and show, if I mistake not, the palpable untenableness alike of one and all. Which done, ^[1] It may perhaps be well, from respect to his venerated name, to add an examination of the late Dr. Arnold’s general prophetic counter-theory. This, together with a notice of certain recent counter-views on the Millennium, will complete our review of counter-prophetic Schemes.

Now with regard to the Præterist Scheme, on the review of which we are first to enter, it may be remembered that I stated it to have had its origin with the Jesuit Alcasar: ^[2] and that it was subsequently, and after Grotius’ and Hammond’s prior adoption of it, adopted and improved by Bossuet, the great Papal champion, under one form and modification; ^[3] then afterwards, under another modification, by Hernnschneider, Eichhorn, and others of the German critical and generally infidel school of the last half-century; ^[4] followed in our own æra by Heinrichs, and by Moses Stuart of the United States of America. ^[5] The two modifications appear to have arisen mainly out of the differences of date assigned to the Apocalypse; whether about the end of Nero’s reign or Domitian’s ^[6] I shall, I think, pretty well exhaust whatever can be thought to call for examination in the system, by considering separately, first the Neronic, or favorite German form and modification of the Præterist Scheme, as propounded by Eichhorn, Hug, Heinrichs, and Moses Stuart; secondly Bossuet’s Domitianic form, the one most generally approved, I believe, by Roman Catholics.

CHAPTER I.

§ 1. EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF THE GERMAN NERONIC

PRÆTERIST APOCALYPTIC COUNTER-SCHEME.

The reader has already been made acquainted with the main common features of this German form of the Præterist Apocalyptic Scheme. ^[7] Differing on points of detail, yet (with the exception that Hartwig and Herder pretty much confine themselves to the Jewish catastrophe, and Ewald, Bleek, and De Wette to that of heathen Rome ^[8] ) it may generally be described as embracing both catastrophes: the fall of Judaism being signified under that of Jerusalem, the fall of Heathenism under that of Rome; the one as drawn out in symbol from Apoc. vi. to xi. inclusive, the other from Apoc. xii. to xix.: whereupon comes thirdly, in Apoc. xx., a figuration of the triumph of Christianity. So, with certain differences, Hernnschneider, Eichhorn, Hug, Heinrichs, &c., in Germany; ^[9] - M. Stuart in America; and, in England, Dr. Davidson. ^[10] In my review of the Scheme each of these two historic catastrophes, as supposed Apocalyptically figured, will of course furnish matter for critical examination; not without reference to the Apocalyptic date also, as in fact essentially mixed up with the historic question. - But, before entering on them, I think it may be well to promise a notice,

Ist, on THE GENERALLY VAGUE LOOSE PRINCIPLE OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

professedly followed by the Præterists

Considering the self-sufficient dogmatism which pre-eminently characterizes the School in question, even as if, à priori to examination; all other schemes were to be deemed totally wrong, and the Præterist Scheme alone conformable to the discoveries and requirements of “modern exegesis,” ^[11] (a dogmatism the more remarkable, when exhibited by a man of calm temperament and unimpassioned style, like Professor Stuart, ^[12] and which to certain weaker minds may seem imposing,) the question is sure to arise, What the grounds of this strange presumptuousness of tone? What the new and overpowering evidence in favor of the modern Præterists? What the discovery of such unthought of coincidence between the prophecy on the one hand, and certain facts of their chosen Neronic æra on the other, as to settle the Apocalyptic controversy in their favor, at once and for ever? And then the surprise is increased by finding that not only has no such discovery been made, not only no such discovery been even pretended to, but that in fact they put it forward, as the very boast of the Præterist system, that coincidences exact and particular are not to be sought or thought of: that the three main ideas about the three cities, or three antagonist religions represented by them, so as above mentioned; are pretty much all that there is of fact to be unfolded; and that, with certain exceptions, (of which exceptions more in a later part of this review,) all else is to be regarded as but the poetic drapery and ornament. ^[13] - Now in mere rationalists of the School, like Eichhorn and many others, men professedly disbelieving the inspiration of the Apocalypse, all this is quite natural and consistent: seeing that its author wrote, they take for granted, as a mere dramatist and poet; and, as to details, what the limit every assigned to a poet’s fancy, except as his own taste or critical judgment might impose one? But that Christian expositors, like Professor Stuart and Dr. Davidson, men professing to believe in St. John’s inspiration as a prophet, (and to these I here chiefly refer,) should deliberately so pronounce on the matter, so resolve even what seems most specific into generalizations, ^[14] and what seems stated as fact into mere poetic drapery, will appear probably to my readers, as to myself, most astonishing.

It is of course due to these writers to mark by what process of thought they arrive at this conclusion; and on what principle, or by what reasons, they have justified it to themselves. And, passing by the negative argument from the discrepancy and unsatisfactoriness of the historic detailed interpretations given by expositors who seek in the Apocalypse a prophetic “epitome of the civil and ecclesiastical history of Christendom,” (as to which, wherever justly objected to, the remark was obvious that further research might very possibly supply what was wanting, and rectify what was unsatisfactory, so as I hope has been done on various points in the present Commentary, ^[15] ) passing this, I say, the intended use and object of the Apocalypse, at the presumed time of its writing, will be found to have been that which mainly guided the learned American Professor to the true principle of exegesis, (as he designates it,) whereby to interpret the Book. ^[16] For, argues he, during a persecution like Nero’s (this being his supposed date of the Apocalypse,) when the Church was “bleeding at every pore,” ^[17] how could it take interest in information as to what was to happen in distant ages, (excepting of course the final triumph of Christianity,) or indeed as to anything but what concerned their own immediate age and pressure, whether in Judea or at Rome? Hence then to this the subject-matter of the Apocalypse must be regarded as confined. ^[18] And whereas, on this exegetic hypothesis, scarce anything appears in the actual historic facts of the particular period or catastrophe in question, which can be considered as answering to the prophetic figurations in detail, therefore all idea of any such detailed and particular intent and meaning in these prophetic figurations must be set aside; and they must be regarded as the mere drapery and ornament of a poetic Epopce, albeit by one inspired. As a Scriptural precedent and justification for this generalizing view of the Apocalyptic imagery, Psalm xviii, which was David’s song after his deliverance from Saul, and Isaiah xiii., xiv., on the fall of Babylon, (the former more especially,) are referred to, and insisted on, by the learned Professor. ^[19]

But (reserving the subject of the Apocalyptic date for a remark or two presently under the next head of argument) let me beg here to ask, with reference to the very limited use and object so assigned to the Apocalyptic prophecy, - as if only or chiefly meant for the Christians then living, by them to be understood, and by them applied in the way of encouragement and comfort, as announcing the issue of the trials in which they were then personally engaged, - what right has Professor Stuart thus to limit it? Was it not accordant with the character of God’s revelations, as communicated previously in Scripture, (especially in Daniel’s prophecies, which are of all others the most nearly parallel with the Apocalypse,) to foreshow the future in its continuity from the time when the prophecy was given, even to the consummation: and this, not with the mere present object of comforting his servants then living, but for a perpetual witness to his truth; to be understood only partially, it might be, for generations, but fully in God’s own appointed time? So, for example, in the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ’s first advent; prophecies which not only the Old Testament Jews, but even the disciples of Christ, understood most imperfectly, till Christ himself, after he had actually come, explained them: and so again in Daniel’s prophecies extending to the time of the end; which, until that time of the end, were expressly ordered to be sealed up. ^[20] - And then, next, what historic evidence have we of Christians of Nero’s time having so understood the Apocalypse, as the American Professor would have it that they must have done? ^[21] Not a vestige of testimony exists to the fact of such an understanding; albeit quite general, according to him, among the more intelligent in the Christian body. On the contrary, the early testimony of Irenæus, disciple of Polycarp, who was himself disciple to St. John, indicates a then totally different view of the Apocalyptic Beast from Professor Stuart’s, as if the only one ever known to have been received: a view referring it, not to any previous persecution by Nero and the Roman Empire under him, but to an Antichrist even then future; one that was to arise and persecute the Church not till the breaking up, and reconstruction in another form, of the old Empire. - Moreover the whole that our Professor would have to be shown by the Apocalypse, viz. the assured triumph of Christianity over both Judaism and Paganism, - I say this, instead of being any new revelation specially suited to cheer the Christians of the time, had been communicated in part by Daniel, in part by Christ himself, much more fully and particularly long before. ^[22] As to the Professor’s grand precedent of Psalm xviii., urged again and again in justification of the Apocalypse, as if mere poetic drapery and ornament, is the parallel a real one, or the argument from it valid? Says the Professor; ^[23] See, though the subject of the Psalm be at the heading declared to be David’s deliverance from Saul, yet under what varied imagery this is set forth: - how, in depicting them, David makes the earth to shake and tremble, and the smoke to go forth from God’s nostrils, and his thunderings to be heard in the heaven, and his lightnings shot forth to discomfort the enemy: all mere poetical ornament; not particular circumstantial fact; much less fact in chronological order and development. But, let me ask, does the Psalmist profess, as his very object, to tell the facts that had occurred in the period of David’s suffering from Saul, so as the Apocalyptic revealing Angel does to tell the things of the coming future? ^[24] Or with any such orderly division, and arrangement for chronological development of facts, as in the singularly artificial Apocalyptic division into its three septenaries of Seals, Trumpets, and Vials, (each of the latter subordinate evidently to the former,) and the various chronological periods so carefully interwoven? Again, as to the symbolizations in the Psalm, is Professor Stuart quite sure that they refer only to David and Saul; and that David is not carried forward in the Spirit, beyond his own times and his own experience, to picture forth the future triumphs of the greater David over a greater Saul; triumphs not to be accomplished in fine without very awful elemental convulsions, and the visible and glorious interposition of the Almighty? Surely what is said in verse 43, of his (the chief intended David’s) “being made the head of the heathen,” tells with sufficient clearness that such is indeed the true exegesis of the Psalm: and so most expositors of repute, I believe, explain it. - If the testing is to be by a real parallel, let Daniel’s orderly prophecies of the quadripartite image and the four Beasts be resorted to, to settle the question of exegesis. Is all there figured relative only to Daniel’s own time; and all else mere poetic ornament and drapery?

So much on the general exegetic principles of the German Præterist School. Let me now proceed,

IIndly, to consider these Præterists’ HISTORICAL SOLUTION, including especially the two grand catastrophes laid down by them, as the two main particulars unfolded in the Apocalypse; and show, as I trust, both in respect of the one, and the other, the many and indubitable marks of error stamped upon it.

Of course, the Neronic date is an essential preliminary to this Scheme, in the minds of all Præterist expositors who, like M. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, admit the apostolicity and inspiration of the Book. And, as I venture to think that I have in my 1st Volume completely proved that the true date is Domitianic, agreeably with Irenæus’ testimony, not Neronic or Galbaic, ^[25] that single fact may in such case be of itself deemed conclusive against the theory. - Nor, let me add, in case of non-infidel Præterists only. For the very strong opinion as to the sublimity and surpassing æsthetic beauty of the Apocalypse admitted by the German Neologians, Eichhorn inclusive, as the result of the Semlerian controversy, compared with the utter inferiority of all Church writers of the nearest later date, does even on rationalistic principles almost involve the inference of St. John’s authorship; especially as coupled with the fact of the Apocalyptic writers assumption of authority over the Asiatic Bishops he addressed, and the air of truth, holiness, and honesty that all through mark his character. Which admitted, and also, as by Eichhorn, the Domitianic as the true date, even a rationalist like him must, I think, be prepared to admit the high improbability of such a writer making pretence to prophesy a certain catastrophe about Nero and Rome, and another certain catastrophe about Jerusalem, as if things then future, when in fact the one had happened 30, the other 25 years before. Whence the baselessness, even on rationalistic principles, of the whole Neronic Præterist Scheme. - But we will now proceed more in detail to the examination of the two catastrophes separately.

1. And, 1st, as to the catastrophe of Judaism and Jerusalem, depicted in the figuration from Apoc. vi. to xi. inclusive.

Argues Professor Stuart, as abstracted in brief, thus: ^[26] - “It is for some considerable time not unfolded who the enemy is against whom the rider of the white horse in the first Seal has gone forth conquering, followed by his agencies of war, famine, ^[27] and pestilence; him against whom the cry is raised of the Christian martyrs slain under the 5th Seal, and the revolution of whose political state is evidently the subject of Seal the sixth. But in Apoc. vii. the enemy meant is intimated. For when it is stated that 144,000 are sealed, by way of protection, out of all the tribes of Israel, meaning evidently those that have been converted from among the Jews to Christianity, it follows clearly that it is the unsealed ones of those tribes, or unconverted Jews, forming the great body of Israel, that are the destined objects of destruction. A view this quite confirmed in Apoc. xi.; where the inner temp’ is measured, as that which is not to be ejected: this meaning, that whatever was spiritual in the Jewish religion was to be preserved in Christianity; ^[28] while the rest, or mere external parts of the system, as well as the Holy City Jerusalem itself, was to be abandoned and trodden down.” So substantially Professor Stuart: and so too his prototype Eichhorn, and his English follower Dr. Davidson. This is the strength of their first Part; the details of Seals and Trumpets being of course little more in this system than intimations of something awful attending or impending, altogether general; or indeed, perhaps, mere “poetic drapery and costume.” Let us then try its strength where it professes to be strongest.

The enemy to be destroyed, it is said, was shown to be the Jews: because it was the Jewish tribes (all but the sealed few from out of them) that were to have the tempests of the four winds let loose on them; and because it was the Jewish temple (all but the inner and measured part of it) that was to be abandoned to the Gentiles. Let us test this conclusion by the threefold test of what is shown, first, as to the intent of the Jewish symbolic scenery elsewhere in the Apocalypse; secondly, as to the religious profession of the people actually destroyed in the Trumpet-judgments; thirdly, as to the intended people’s previous murder of Christ’s two Witnesses, in their thereupon doomed city.

As to the first, already in the opening vision a chamber as of the Jewish temple had been revealed; with seven candlesticks like those in the old Jewish temple, ^[29] and one in the High Priest’s robing that walked among them. Was its signification then Jewish or Christian; of Judaism or Christianity? We are not left to conjecture. The High Priest was distinctively the Christian High Priest, Christ Jesus; the seven candlesticks the seven Christian Churches. This explanation at the outset is most important to mark; being the fittest key surely to the intent of all that occurs on the scene afterwards of similar imagery. - Further, in Seal 5 a temple like the Jewish, at least the temple-court with its great brazen altar, is again noted as figured on the scene. Now we might anticipate pretty confidently, from the previously given key just alluded to, that the temple was here too symbolic of the Christian worship and religion, not the Jewish. But there is, over and above this, independent internal evidence to affix to it the same meaning. For the souls under the altar, who confessedly depict Christian martyrs, appear there of course as sacrifices offered on that altar; their places being where the ashes of the Jewish altar-sacrifices were gathered. Which being so, could the altar mean that of the literal Judaism; and the vision signify that the Jews, zealous for their law, and thinking to do God service, had there slain the Christian martyrs, as if heretics? Certainly not; because on their altar the Jews never offered human sacrifices, and would indeed have esteemed it a pollution. Therefore we have independent internal evidence that the Jewish temple and altar, figured on the Apocalyptic scene, had here too a Christian significance; depicting (as both St. Paul, and Polycarp after him, so beautifully applied the figure) the Christian’s willing sacrifice of himself and his life for Christ. ^[30] - Further in Apoc. viii. the temple is again spoken of as apparent; with its brazen sacrificial altar in the altar-court, its golden incense-altar within the temple proper, and one too, habited as a Priest, who received and offered incense, according to the ceremony of the Jewish ritual. Was this meant literally of Jewish incense and Jewish worship? Assuredly not. For the incense of the offering priest is declared to be “the prayers of all the saints;” i.e. as all admit, ^[31] of Christians distinctively from literal Jews. - Again, with reference even to the temple figuration in Apoc. xi. 2, which furnishes his chief Jewish proof-text, our Professor himself admits, nay argues, that the inner and most characteristic part of it (the same that was measured by St. John) signified that spiritual part of Judaism which was to be preserved in Christianity, as contrasted with the mere externals of Jewish ritualism: ^[32] thus construing it, not literally, with reference to that of the Christian Israel: ^[33] although with no little mixture of what is erroneous and consequently confused and inconsistent in his reasoning. ^[34] - All which being so, what, I ask, must by the plainest requirements of consistency and common sense follow, but that as the offerers of Jewish worship in the Jewish temple, depicted on the Apocalyptic scene, meant in fact Christians, so they that are called Jews or Israelites in the Apocalyptic context must mean Christians also, at least by profession? A conclusion clenched by the fact which I have elsewhere urged, that the twelve tribes of God’s Israel in the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi. are on all hands admitted to designate Christians, mainly Gentile Christians; and so surely, in all fair reasoning, the twelve tribes of Israel mentioned in Apoc. vii. also.

Next, as to the religious profession or character of those that were to suffer through the plagues of the first great act of the Drama, (or rather Epopee, as Stuart would prefer to call it) ^[35] their character is most distinctly laid down on Apoc. ix. 20, as actual idolaters. For it is there said, “that the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship dæmons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood:” - description so diametrically opposed to the character of the Jews in Nero’s time, and even afterwards, that one would have thought with Bossuet, ^[36] and indeed Ewald too, ^[37] that it settled the point, if anything could settle it, that Jews were not the parties meant. And how then do the German Præterists, that take the Judaic view, overcome the difficulty? Few and brief are the words of Eichhorn’s paraphrase: “It means that they persevered in that same obstinate mind, which once showed itself in the worship of idols!” ^[38] says M. Stuart: ^[39] “In the Old Testament Jews that acted in a heathenish way were called heathens: and moreover in the New Testament covetousness is called idolatry: and moreover in the time of Herod theatres, and other such like heathen customs, had become common in Judea.” ^[40] But surely such observations, when put forward in explanation of the descriptive clause that spoke of men “worshipping idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood,” must be felt to be rather an appeal ad miscricordiam in the Expositor’s difficulty, than an argument for the fitness of the descriptive clause, to suit the Jews of the times of Nero and Vespasian: especially when coming from one who is led elsewhere in his comment to state (and state most truly) that the Jews were ready, one and all, rather to submit their necks to the Roman soldiers’ swords, then to admit an image that was to be worshipped within their city. ^[41] Indeed it is notorious that they regarded images altogether as abominations; and that the Roman attempts at erecting them more than once nearly caused desperate rebellions. - As for Dr. Davidson, he here exhibits more at least of discretion than the American Professor. He passes over the difficulty, as if re desperatâ, in dead silence.

Try we, thirdly, the Judaic theory of our German Præterists by the test of the Witness-slaying prophecy, including the place, time, and author of their slaughter. - This is put forth as one of the strongest points in the Judaic part of their view: it being stated to occur in the city “where the Lord was crucified;” i.e., say the Præterists, in Jerusalem. But first, we ask, what witnesses? “The Jewish chief priests Ananus and Jesus,” answer Herder and Eichhorn; “mercilessly massacred, as Josephus tells us, by the Zealots.” ^[42] But how so? Must they not rather be Christ’s witnesses, exclaims Stuart; ^[43] (since it is said, “I will give power to my witnesses;”) and therefore Christians? Of course they must. Which being so, the next question is, Who then the notable Christians that Stuart considers to have been slain in Jerusalem, in the witness character, at this epoch; i.e. during the Romans’ invasion of Judea? Does he not himself repeat to us the well-known story on record, that the Christians without delay fled to Pella, agreeably with their Lord’s warning and direction, so soon as they saw the Romans approach to beleaguer Jerusalem? (Luke 21:20: And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. 21: Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.”) “But,” say he in reply, “can we imagine that all would be able to make their escape? Would there not be sick and aged and paupers to delay the flight; and faithful teachers too of Christianity, that would choose to remain, to preach repentance and faith to their countrymen? These I regard as symbolized by the two Witnesses:” ^[44] and these therefore as answering in their history at this crisis to St. John’s extraordinary and circumstantial prediction about the Witnesses’ testimony, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension. But what the historic testimony to support his view? Alas! none! absolutely none! In apology for this total and most unfortunate silence of history he exclaims: “The Jew Josephus is not the historian of Christians; and early ecclesiastical historians have perished:” adding however, as if sufficient to justify his hypothesis; “But Christ intimates, in his prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, that there would be persecution of Christians at the period in question.” A statement quite unjustified (if he means persecution in death in Jerusalem, and at the time of the siege) by the passages he refers to. ^[45] Does not Christ say, “Not a hair of your heads shall perish?” At last he condescends to this: “At all events it is clear that the Zealots, and other Jews, did not lose their disposition to persecute at this period!!” ^[46] Such is the impotent conclusion of Professor Moses Stuart; such the best explanation he can devise, on his hypothesis, of the wonderful Apocalyptic prophecy respecting the Witnesses. - Nor is his need supplied by Dr. Davidson. “Notwithstanding God’s long-suffering mercy,” says this latter, “the Jews continue to persecute the faithful witnesses.” This, I can assure the Reader, is the sum total of his observations on the point before us. ^[47] - Nor is it here only that the Judaic part of the Præterist Scheme, applied to the Witnesses-story in the Apocalypse, breaks down. For, further, the city where the Witnesses’ corpses were to be exposed is declared to be the city the great one; ^[48] that which is the emphatic title of the seven-hilled Babylon or Rome, in the Apocalypse; never of Jerusalem. ^[49] (How it might be Rome, and yet the city where the Lord Jesus had been crucified, the Reader has long since seen! ^[50] ) - Nor this alone. For the Beast that was to slay them was to qhrion to anabainon ek thv abussou, the Beast that was to rise from the abyss; ^[51] a Beast which (especially with the distinctive article prefixed so as here to it) cannot but mean one and the same with that which is mentioned under precisely the same designation in Apoc. xvii. 8; ^[52] and there, as all the Præterists themselves allow, designates a power associated some way with Rome. And what Stuart’s explanation? Why, that it means in Apoc. xi. simply Satan! ^[53] Indeed alike the declared fact of the witness-slaying, and of the great city as the place of their slaughter, and of the Beast from the abyss as their slayer, (as also, let me add, the period of the 1260 days, assigned alike to the Witnesses’ sackcloth-prophesying first, and to the Beast’s reign afterwards,) do so interweave the first half of the Apocalyptic prophecy, from Apoc. vi to xi., with the part subsequent, that, as to any such total separation, in respect to subject, of the one from the other, as the Præterists urge, on their hypothesis of a double catastrophe, it is, I am well persuaded, and will be so found by one and all who attempt to work it out, an absolute impossibility. ^[54]

I might add yet a word as to the ill agreeing times of the supposed Jewish catastrophe and the Romans; the former being in the Præterists Scheme first set forth, and the Roman figured afterwards: whereas the chronological order of the two events was in fact just the reverse; the Roman persecution of Christians, and quickly consequent fall of Nero, preceding the fall of Jerusalem. But the argument (which indeed might be spared ex abundanti) will occur again, and somewhat more strikingly, under our next Head. - To this let us then now pass onwards; and consider, as proposed,

2ndly, the German Præterists’ second grand division of the Apocalypse, and second grand catastrophe; viz. that affecting Pagan Rome.

And here, as before, I shall not stop at minor points; but hasten rapidly to that which is considered by the Præterists as their strongest ground. - It is to be understood that they generally make Apoc. xii. retrogressive in its chronology to Christ’s birth, and the Devil’s primary attempts to destroy both him, and his religion, and his early Church in Judea; though in vain. The, after note of the Dragon’s dejection from his former eminence, and the song, “Now is come salvation, &c.,” we arrive at the Woman’s flight into the wilderness, meaning they say the Church’s flight to Pella, on the Romans advancing to besiege Jerusalem: some outbreak of Jewish persecution at the time (the same under which the Witnesses were to fall within Jerusalem) answering probably ^[55] to the floods from the Dragon’s mouth; and 3 1/2 years, said of the Woman’s time in the wilderness, answering also sufficiently well to the length, not indeed of the siege, but of the Jewish war. (Mark, in passing, how the symbolic Woman, first made to be the Theocratic Church in its Jewish form, travailing with, and bringing forth Christ, ^[56] has now become, not the Church Catholic, which in Nero’s time had indeed spread over the Roman world, but the little Section of it which remained stationary in Judea!) - Then the Dragon, being enraged at the Woman, “went away to make war the remainder of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and hold fast the testimony of Jesus.” That is, enraged that the Jews, his original instrument of persecution, should be destroyed and fail him, he leaves the Jewish scene of his former operations, and goes elsewhere, to stir up a new persecutor against Christians in Nero. - But did not Nero’s persecution occur before the Jews’ destruction? No doubt! The anachronism is honestly admitted by Professor Stuart. ^[57] An anachronism the more remarkable, because he makes the vision of the 144,000 in Apoc. xiv. to be a vision of encouragement to Christians, suffering under Nero’s persecution; depicting as it did, according to him, the Christian Jews occupying Jerusalem as a now Christian city: ^[58] an event this which could not have happened till Jerusalem destruction, about four years after the commencement of Nero’s persecution; and did not in fact take place till some years later. ^[59] “But in an Epopee, like the Apocalypse,” says Stuart, “we are surely not bound to rigid rules of a book of Annals!” ^[60]

Thus then we come to consider Apoc. xiii., the Chapter on the Beast; and, connectedly with it, (for it does not need to dwell on the intervening Chapters,) ^[61] the further explanatory symbolizations about the Beast in Apoc. xvii.

Behold us then now before the very citadel of the German Præterists! “And see,” they say, “how impregnable it is! For not only is the Woman that rides the Beast expressly stated to be the seven-hilled imperial city Rome, so that the Beast ridden must be the persecuting Roman Empire; but the time intended is also fixed. For it is said that the Beast’s seven heads, besides figuring seven hills, figured also seven kings, or rather eight: of whom five had fallen at the time of the vision; which must mean the five first emperors, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius; and one, the sixth, was; which of course must be the next after Claudius, i.e. Nero. Nay, to make the thing clearer, the Beasts’ name and number 666 are specified; or, as some copies read, 616. And so it is that in Hebrew, Neron Cæsar, has the value in numbers of 666, which is one frequent Rabbinical way of writing Nero’s name; or “if the Hebrew be that of Nero Cæsar, without the final n, then it gives the number 616.” ^[62]

No doubt the numeral coincidence is worthy of note, and the whole case, so put, quite plausible enough to call for examination. It is indeed obvious to say, as to the name and numeral, that a Greek solution would be preferable to one in Hebrew; and a single name to a double one: principles these recognized, as we have seen, by Irenæus, and all the other early Fathers that commented on the topic. ^[63] But in this there is of course nothing decisive. A graver objection seems to me however to lie against the suggested numeral solution, in that a part of the name being official, - I mean the word Cæsar,- this agnomen, though fitly applicable to Nero while the reigning emperor, would hardly be applicable to him when resuscitated after his death-wound, and so become the Beast of Apoc. xiii. of whom the name was predicated. But his involves inquiry into the Beast’s heads; to which inquiry, as the decisive one, let us now therefore at once pass on.

The heads then, as they assert, mean certain individual kings. This is not surely according to the precedent of Daniel vii. 6, where the third Beast’s four heads would seem from (Dan. viii. 8, “Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.”) - to have signified the monarchical successions that governed the four kingdoms into which Alexander’s empire was divided at his death. - But, not to stop at this, the decisive question next recurs, What the eighth head of the Beast, on this hypothesis of the Præterists: Nero being the sixth; and, as they generally say, Galba, who reigned but a short time, the seventh? It is admitted (and common sense itself forces the admission) that this eighth head is the same which is said in Apoc. xiii. 3, 12, 14 -- “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.”, and vs. 12, “And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.”, and vs. 14, “And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.” - “to have had a wound with a sword and to have revived:” and it is this revived head, or Beast under it, (let my Readers well mark this, ^[64] ) that is the subject of all the prophecy concerning the first Beast in Apoc. xiii., and all concerning the Beast ridden by the Woman in Apoc. xvii. What then, we ask, this eighth head of the Beast? And, in reply, first Eichhorn, and then his copyists Heinrichs, Stuart, Davidson, all four refer us to a rumor prevalent in Nero’s time, and believed by many, that after suffering some reverse he would return again to power: a rumor which after his death took the form that he would revive again, and reappear, and retake the empire. ^[65] Such is their explanation. The eighth head of the Beast is the imaginary revived Nero. - But do they not explain the Beast (the revived Beast) in Apoc. xiii., and his blasphemies, and persecution of the saints, and predicated continuance 42 months, of the real original Nero, and his blasphemies and his three or four years’ persecution of the Christians, begun November, 64, A.D. and ended with Nero’s death, June 9, A.D. 68? Such indeed is the case; and by this palpable self-contradiction, (one which however they cannot do without,) they give to their own solution its death-wound: as much its death-wound, I may say, as that given to the Beast itself to which the solution relates.

So that really, as regards the truth of the solution concerned, it is needless to go further. Nor shall I stop to expose sundry other absurdities that might easily be shown to attach to it: e.g. the supposed figuration of the fall of the Pagan Roman empire in the fall of the individual emperor Nero, albeit succeeded by Pagan emperors like himself. ^[66] - But I cannot feel it right to conclude my critical examination of the system without a remark as to something on this head far graver, and more to be reprobated, than any mere expository error, however gross or obvious. The reader will have observed that as well Prof. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, as the German Eichhorn, explain the repeated direct statements, “The Beast had a wound with the sword, and lived,” “The Beast that thou sawest is not, and shall be, and is to ascend from the abyss,” &c. &c., to be simply allusions to a rumor current in Nero’s time, but which in fact was an altogether false rumor. That is, they make St. John tell a direct lie: and tell it, with all the most flagrant aggravation that fancy itself can suppose to attach to a lie; viz. under the form of a solemn prophecy received from heaven! Now of Eichhorn, and others of the same German rationalistic school of theology, we must admit that they are here at least open and consistent. Their declared view of the Apocalypse is as of a mere uninspired poem by an uninspired poet. So it was but a recognized poetical license in St. John to tell the falsehood. But that men professing belief in the Christian faith, and in the divine inspiration as well as apostolic origin of this Book, should so represent the matter, is surely as surprising as lamentable. It is but in fact the topstone-crowning to that explaining away of the prophetic symbols and statements, as mere epopee, of which I spoke before, ^[67] as characteristic of the system. And how does it show the danger of Christian men indulging in long and friendly familiarity with infidel writings! For not only are the Scriptural expository principles and views of Christian men and Neologists so essentially different, that it is impossible for their new wine to be put into our old bottles, without the bottles bursting; but the receiver himself is led too often heedlessly to sip of the poison, and bethinks him not that death is in the cup. ^[68]

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